Three Little Lies Read online

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said coldly. ‘Why do you say it like that?’

  ‘Like what? I didn’t mean anything by it. I genuinely wonder what it will be like. I’ve thought about her a lot, over the years. Poor girl.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ I say. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to jump down your throat, I’m just a bit…’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he says. ‘Me too. It’s all so messed up. What have the police said about Sasha? Will they still not do anything?’

  ‘They are looking for her, but they don’t seem to be looking that hard. They still think she’s taken herself off somewhere.’

  ‘God, I can’t believe this is all starting up again. I thought it was over. I thought it was done, that I’d never have to face him again.’

  I am horrified to realise he is crying. If he was here, I’d probably put a stiff arm across his shoulders, but I don’t know what to say to offer any comfort.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say uselessly. ‘I’ve never really thought about how hard this must have been for you.’

  ‘Hard? My whole family was torn apart by it. Every-thing was fine until that year. I wish to God she’d never come to live with us.’

  ‘It wasn’t Sasha’s fault!’ I say, my breath coming faster. ‘How can you blame her?’

  ‘If she’d never come to live with us, we wouldn’t have had to move house, we would never have met Karina.’

  ‘I know he’s your brother, but Daniel is…’ I’m unsure of the right word. Evil? I’m not sure I know what that means. It sounds like something from a trashy made-for-TV movie. ‘What I mean is, this was always going to happen. If it hadn’t been Karina, it would have been someone else. For some reason, it made him feel good to take what he wanted, to have power over her. It wasn’t some spur of the moment thing, Nicholas, some… mistake. It had been going on for months.’

  ‘I know that. God, of course I know that. But it was something about her, Karina; she made it too easy…’

  ‘How dare you! First you’re trying to blame Sasha, and now it’s Karina’s fault? That she got raped? You think she was asking for it? What do you think this is, the nineteen fifties?’

  ‘Sorry, Ellen.’ He sniffs, breathes out in a whoosh of air. ‘I didn’t mean it. I know it was Daniel’s fault, all of it. He’s a fucking bastard.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, I’m due at work soon,’ I say.

  ‘OK. Listen, Ellen, if you hear anything about Sasha, will you let me know?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  It feels for a moment as if he’s about to say something else, but the moment passes and we say an uncomfortable goodbye. I put my phone in my bag, and unexpectedly sink down on to the floor, my knees pulled up to my chest. In the quiet of the hallway, all I can hear is the hammering of my heart.

  Karina

  November 2006

  We don’t normally see each other at the corner house, but he’d already told me we’d have the place to ourselves. Olivia’s away at a concert in Vienna and everyone else was going to be out. I love being there with him; it feels so… forbidden. Obviously I’m at the house sometimes, hanging out with Sasha and Ellen – when they deign to invite me. That has a thrill all of its own, especially if he’s there. Knowing that I’ve been in parts of the house Ellen’s never seen; brushing past him casually in the kitchen; catching a glimpse of an expression on his face that only I know is just for me.

  He pushed me back hard on to the kitchen table, before we’d kissed or even had a proper conversation. The sharp edge of it dug into my back. I tried to look into his eyes but they were fixed on the dresser with its collection of mismatched teacups and family photographs.

  I told him he was hurting me, but it was as if he couldn’t hear me. My head was banging against the table with every thrust, hitting the exact same place over and over. It hurt a little more every time, and I began to focus solely on that spot, telling myself that this wouldn’t go on for ever, that he would finish soon and my head wouldn’t hurt any more. I tried to put myself forward mentally to a time when this wouldn’t be happening, when it would have stopped. And then it did, him wiping himself casually on a piece of kitchen roll, me pulling my knickers back into place, tugging down my skirt, putting a tentative finger to the back of my head.

  While he was doing it, it sort of felt like he was raping me, but afterwards I realised that was silly of me. He’s my boyfriend. We’ve had sex loads of times before. How could it have been rape? And he was totally normal afterwards, talking to me about what he’d been up to, a film he’d seen, Sasha.

  I suppose that’s how he likes it sometimes. I’ll try and enjoy it a bit more if it happens again.

  Olivia

  July 2007

  I am struggling to find it in Daniel today, his little boy’s face. I thought I would always be able to see it but the layers of experience and age are piling on faster than I ever realised they could. Today is the day when I am going to have to hear it from his own lips. I suspect there will be harder days to come; days when I will have to fight to keep on believing in him. But today is about him, and I have to be strong. I can feel his need for me streaming out of him, as it has done ever since he was born, equal parts burden and privilege.

  Daniel’s barrister takes him through the events of the evening again. She looks so young – not much older than him, although she must be. This constant telling and re-telling is like a hideous, Ancient Mariner-style punishment, making us all relive the night over and over again, each time with tiny, subtle differences. Maybe if we hear it enough times, the truth will start to emerge of its own accord, blinking in the sunlight.

  As I hear again about the first time Daniel spoke to Karina, I risk a sideways glance at Dilys, crammed into her usual seat at the end of the row, a sheen of sweat on her round face. I wonder absently how old she was when she had Karina. Is Dilys younger than she looks or was Karina a last-chance baby, a miracle?

  His account of the evening up until he and Karina went into his bedroom is the same as everybody else’s. It is once they are in the bedroom that his story differs.

  ‘As we have heard from several witnesses, after spending some minutes kissing you in the hallway downstairs, Miss Barton went willingly with you to the bedroom shortly after ten p.m.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  Even the prosecution doesn’t dispute this, although I’m not sure what it means, or why it matters. How many times has it been drummed into us – no means no at whatever stage a woman chooses to say it; and if a man continues after she has said it, it’s rape. Gone are the days, surely, when a woman could be blamed for being raped because she was wearing a short skirt? Because she took her clothes off and got into bed with a man? Because she was asking for it? Perhaps I’m being totally naïve to believe that. On the one hand, I am outraged at the idea that they might try and blame Karina for putting herself into an unsafe situation; on the other I want them to throw everything at her, use everything in their arsenal to prove that my son is not a rapist. I don’t let myself consider what that makes me.

  ‘And what happened when you got into the bedroom?’

  ‘She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. I sat down on the bed. I… I asked if she was OK, if she wanted to do it. And she said yes.’ I have a horrible feeling that there is something missing from his story, a space between his words that he is not filling.

  ‘And by “do it”, are you sure Miss Barton understood that you meant sexual intercourse? Are you absolutely certain that she consented at this point?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says firmly, and my shoulders drop because now I believe him. ‘She came and sat down next to me. We talked for a bit, and then we… we lay down and we had sex.’

  ‘Was there any point at which Miss Barton said no, or stop, or anything at all to suggest that she was not consenting?’

  ‘No.’ He reddens but doesn’t look my way. I imagine he is pretending I’m not here, although I know he is glad that I am. They’ve o
bviously told him to keep his head up, look at the barrister or the jury, maintain eye contact, but he’s struggling. I yearn to reach out and hold him, take him in my arms and tell him it’s going to be OK.

  ‘Miss Barton has testified that she had been drinking alcohol. Did you have any indication that she was so intoxicated as to be unable to consent to sexual intercourse?’

  ‘No, I did not. She was fully in control of her actions.’

  ‘After you had finished having sex, what happened?’

  ‘I got up to go to the bathroom. She needed to go too, so I said I’d see her downstairs when she was ready. I waited for her in the piano room but she didn’t come down. Mum asked me to play the piano, and I couldn’t very well say no, I didn’t want to tell her what had happened…’ His eyes stray to me again and I try to smile. It’s OK, I’m here. ‘So I started playing, and then people wanted me to play songs for them to sing, and I couldn’t get away. I assumed Karina had got chatting to someone in another room. Then Ellen came in to the piano room and whispered something to Mum.’

  I couldn’t really hear Ellen over the singing, just that something had happened and I needed to come. I thought someone had broken a glass or spilled red wine on the carpet.

  ‘A few minutes later, Mum came in again and said I needed to come out and talk to her. We went upstairs to her room and she told me… what Karina had said.’

  I’ll never forget how I felt as I climbed the stairs with my son to tell him he had been accused of rape: the pure shock that flooded me, a shakiness that pervaded my whole body; the way my breath caught in my throat, making me feel as if I was choking; the treacherous way I wondered if it might be true.

  ‘We have heard about the injuries found on Miss Barton’s thighs – injuries consistent with being cut with broken glass. Did you at any point inflict such injuries on her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were those injuries present the last time you saw her, when you left her in your bedroom to go to the bathroom?’

  ‘No.’ He pulls at his collar, trying to loosen it, and I will him to stop. To keep his hands folded in front of him as he’s been told.

  ‘Do you have any idea how those injuries came to be inflicted?’

  ‘No. I… I can only assume that she did it herself.’

  A large man on the jury scribbles something in his notebook. What on earth can it be? Did it herself???

  It’s an enormous relief when the judge proclaims a lunch break and brings the session to a close. I wish I had a better idea of how it was going. I can’t tell anything from the jurors’ faces. Is anyone feeling sympathetic towards him? There’s a feeling of suspension in the air, as if we are all waiting for something.

  Maybe we are waiting to see which of the two Karinas is the true one. One is a naïve, helpless victim, a mere girl; a girl who was taken advantage of in the most horrible way by a sexual predator; the other is a troubled young woman, who for reasons unknown has developed a vendetta against Daniel, which has also had the effect of attracting longed-for attention to herself.

  It seems entirely possible to me that the jury could believe either of these things. I try to focus on the second Karina, the attention-seeking little madam that I have seen her be. I try not to think about how easy it would be for me to believe in the first.

  Ellen

  September 2017

  Karina’s house looks at me blankly, the street quiet, with no sign of a party. I think back to those evenings at the Monktons’: the illicit sourness of the wine Tony would pour for us; the rise and fall of posh voices all around, debating politics and literature; classical music being bashed out on the piano; singing, but like nothing I’d ever heard before; the burning at the back of my throat as I inhaled on my first joint. I take a firmer hold on the bubble bath set I have wrapped for Karina (a Christmas gift from my aunt last year) and the bottle of wine I’ve brought, walk up the path and ring the bell.

  Dilys answers the door wearing a yellow flowered dress that strains under the arms where it is pulled tight across her chest. She breaks into a smile when she sees me, taking the proffered bottle of wine with one hand and pulling me into an awkward half-hug with the other. I try not to breathe in her musty scent as the soft, papery skin of her arm presses into my neck. I wish to God I had trusted my gut feeling and stayed away.

  ‘It’s so good to see you, Ellen.’

  I follow her in. There are still no discernible sounds of a party. She leads me into the front room, and I stand, stricken, in the doorway. It is worse, so much worse, than I feared. Two women smile at me from a green velour sofa that has seen better days. They could be any age from forty to sixty, but they look so similar to Dilys they must be her sisters. On a wing chair in the corner, an elderly man with a startlingly white moustache looks to be on the verge of nodding off. On two wooden dining chairs set out by the bay window are a couple around my parents’ age, who I vaguely recognise. That’s it. There is no sign of Karina.

  ‘This is Auntie Meryl and Auntie Jane.’ One of the sisters gives a little wave and the other one giggles.

  ‘And Uncle Stanley.’ The moustached man’s head jerks up at this.

  ‘Very nice to meet you,’ he mumbles.

  ‘And you remember Pat and Ian, from next door.’

  Of course. The neighbours from Karina’s old house. We used to go round there selling ‘perfume’ that we had made by crushing rose petals into little bottles of water. Pat would buy them for 5p and Ian would give us a mint humbug from a stash he kept in his desk drawer. We were fascinated by them because they had no children. Karina said it was because they had never had sex, and I had pretended to know what she meant.

  ‘Where’s Karina?’ I ask, trying to sound normal.

  ‘Oh, she’s upstairs getting changed. She’ll be down in a minute. Sit down,’ says Dilys.

  ‘Could I use the toilet?’ I can’t stay in this room a moment longer; I’ll suffocate. Dilys points me along the hall to a downstairs toilet, and I close the door behind me, leaning against it, my need to breathe deeply to calm myself fighting with the peach air freshener that fails to mask the underlying odour of damp and urine. What could I say to get me out of here now? Nothing is worth this, not even finding out what Karina and Sasha were doing in Café Crème two weeks ago. Feigning illness seems to be the best course of action, so I emerge from the toilet trying to look unhappy and sick, which, given how I feel, is not hard. I am hovering outside the door to the front room, hand on my stomach, prepared lies on my tongue, when I hear footsteps on the stairs and see Karina, in smart black trousers and a peacock blue silk shirt, her make-up immaculate. Her face is transformed when she sees me; she lights up.

  ‘Ellen! I’m so glad you came.’

  Slowly, I lower my hand and try to arrange my face into a suitably festive expression.

  ‘Happy birthday.’ I hand over the bubble bath. It looks very small in its gaudy wrap.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll open it later, with the others.’ Her words conjure a table piled high with beribboned gifts, instead of the few small, square boxes I had seen on a side table in the front room, wrapped in paper so cheap that the corners of the contents were beginning to poke out. ‘Come through.’

  Back in the room of doom, Dilys has opened a bottle of sparkling wine and is pouring it into rarely used champagne glasses, sticky with kitchen grease to which a film of dust has adhered. I sit on a hard chair by the door, taking a glass and sipping at it, trying not to retch at the bits floating on the surface. Dilys hands round a bowl of plain crisps. They are a bit softer than they should be and I chew at one, forcing it down with another reluctant sip of my drink.

  ‘So, how have you been?’ asks Pat. She smiles warmly, and I have a sudden, crystal-sharp memory of her kindness to me as a child. ‘It seems only yesterday that you were knocking on my door every minute to ask for your ball back!’

  ‘I’m very well, thanks,’ I say, wondering briefly what would happen if I did what no one ever does an
d answered that question truthfully. ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, all right apart from my usual trouble.’

  I smile sympathetically and try to look as if I know what her usual trouble is, although how she thinks I would is beyond me.

  ‘What about your mum? She all right?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine.’

  Karina is standing by the fireplace, the wine in her hand untouched.

  ‘Mum,’ she says now. ‘I wanted to show Ellen that dress I bought.’

  ‘Oh yes, love, you two go upstairs. I know what you girls are like: you’ll be up there for hours giggling and trying on clothes. It’s just like the old days, isn’t it?’

  I smile weakly and follow Karina out of the room and up the stairs. I half expect her bedroom to be exactly as it was in their old house in 2006, but the walls in here are painted duck-egg blue and the bed clothes are a tasteful pale grey linen. There are no pictures on the walls, no photos or personal touches. It looks like an unused spare room. Karina slumps down on the bed, her back to the wall. I sit beside her, on the very edge, as if poised for flight.